Thursday, January 17, 2008
Welcome to the Greenhill blog!
Greetings! I have set up this blog to allow us a forum for interaction as we seek to follow Christ with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. At various times I will post some comments or questions for discussion and the comments section will allow us to interact on those issues! If you have a any questions or need help getting started just email me at pastororv@cfu.net !
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3 comments:
Very nice blog, I thought I would leave the first comment.
I guess if no one else wants to blog I will. I would like to speak from my heart and be very upfront. There have been occassions in the last few years that I have thought of leaving Greenhill Baptist. As I would soul search, I would ask myself, "Why do I attend church?" My answer, "To worship and study the Word of God." Do I get this at Greenhill. Yes, I do. I feel we are blessed to have a pastor that preaches the Word has great knowledge to support his sermons with scripture. I also believe we are doubly blessed to have such a talented worship band. What music do I like? I like it all. I love the contemporary, but like hymns as well. (I think a bit more Third Day would be great!!)
Now the people who have been trying to persuade me to come and worship at their church talk about the great fellowship. At this point in my life, I do not believe I am looking for fellowship. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying fellowship is not intergral part of a church, just not my priority. Do we have fellowship at Greenhill. Most definitely. However, I think fellowship can be subjective and have different definitions for each person. I believe their is fellowship.
With that said, I would like to voice what I would like to see worked on at Greenhill. First, I have heard people tell me that they do not want to see the church grow. That puzzles me. God wishes for us to evangilize. We should feel blessed and honored when visitors chose Greenhill as a place to worship. Why do they not return? Are we too welcoming? or Not welcoming enough? I do not want to see our church become thousands of members, but I do think we need to grow and welcome people into joining the Greenhill family in worship.
I would love to see our activities be more service oriented rather than "all about Greenhill". I think we do many things that falls under this but I also think we can improve.
I also sometimes feel that there is a disconnect among members. Perhaps this is due to differing spiritual goals. Maybe having this blog or periodic surveys will encourage members to voice their needs and wishes so we, as a church, can work to unite everyone in providing spiritual needs.
On the Bible study. I would not change a thing. I enjoy Bible studies that study the Bible. I do not know my Bible very well, and that is a personal goal of mine is to learn it better.
Bottom line. When I think about leaving Greenhill, I can never give a reason why, but I can give several reasons why to stay. I feel very blessed to be a part of this family.
I think maybe what some people are looking for is "community", not just interacting at prearranged events. But, having the prearranged events helps in building the community. Maybe it starts with inviting people over to our homes for dinner so that we can get to know them better and begin to build a deeper relationship. We need to feel comfortable sharing our joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses without being judged.
When people say they don't want to get bigger, I think that they are afraid of becoming a "megachurch" where you don't know the majority of the people that go to the church. So, I do think they want to grow but are afraid of the megachurch size. We always need to grow because we aren't always going to be around here on this earth, and in order to perpetuate the church, we HAVE to grow! Just look at all of the people that faithfully attended this church, but for some reason have moved away. Growth is one of the signs of a healthy church.
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